My Dell laptop (recently did a clean install to Windows has a Recovery partition in addition to an OEM partition and the OS partition. The OS partition is "Primary Partition, Boot, Page File, and Crash Dump". The Recovery Partition is "Primary Partition, Active, and System".

Dell did something that both made sense and does not make sense. The "Active" partition is where your boot loader is. It shouldn't be with the OS partition, because if the OS partition poops out, it makes troubleshooting harder (the boot loader also contains the recovery environment). The reason why it's in the recovery partition is because it makes the factory reset easier. Technically the recovery environment is smart enough to discover all partitions to find the system image... which is where the "doesn't make sense" part is.

So can you delete it? Yes. But you now presented yourself with two problems:

You can't restore your computer. Unless you happen to have a spare Windows disk around somewhere.

You'll have to fix your boot loader, which requires a bootable recovery environment or putting it into another computer which you can do all the fun stuff in command line.

Dell did something that both made sense and does not make sense. The "Active" partition is where your boot loader is. It shouldn't be with the OS partition, because if the OS partition poops out, it makes troubleshooting harder (the boot loader also contains the recovery environment). The reason why it's in the recovery partition is because it makes the factory reset easier. Technically the recovery environment is smart enough to discover all partitions to find the system image... which is where the "doesn't make sense" part is.

So can you delete it? Yes. But you now presented yourself with two problems:

You can't restore your computer. Unless you happen to have a spare Windows disk around somewhere.

You'll have to fix your boot loader, which requires a bootable recovery environment or putting it into another computer which you can do all the fun stuff in command line.

I have a Windows 8 upgrade disk, and I also made a system recovery disk. I don't have any idea how to fix the boot loader. So I'm inclined to leave things as they are.

What else is on the recovery partition that causes it to be shown as "system"?

The boot loader.

So, if I understand this, I need to move the bootloader from the recovery partition to the OS partition - or use fixxboot to create a bootloader on the OS partition. Then make the OS partition active, and then delete the recovery partition. Is that right?

So, if I understand this, I need to move the bootloader from the recovery partition to the OS partition - or use fixxboot to create a bootloader on the OS partition. Then make the OS partition active, and then delete the recovery partition. Is that right?

So, if I understand this, I need to move the bootloader from the recovery partition to the OS partition - or use fixxboot to create a bootloader on the OS partition. Then make the OS partition active, and then delete the recovery partition. Is that right?

Shrink the partition 100MB. You can do this in Control Panel → Administrative Tools → Computer Management → Storage → Disk Management. Otherwise use some other utility like Partition Wizard or something

Open up Command Prompt as an administrator (right click on the shortcut, select "Run as Administrator")

Enter in "diskpart"

Enter in "list disk". Find the number of the disk the OS is on

Enter in "select disk <# that OS is on>", so if it is disk 0, enter in "select disk 0"

Enter in "create partition primary size=100"

Enter in "list volume", find the number this new partition was assigned.

Shrink the partition 100MB. You can do this in Control Panel → Administrative Tools → Computer Management → Storage → Disk Management. Otherwise use some other utility like Partition Wizard or something

Open up Command Prompt as an administrator (right click on the shortcut, select "Run as Administrator")

Enter in "diskpart"

Enter in "list disk". Find the number of the disk the OS is on

Enter in "select disk <# that OS is on>", so if it is disk 0, enter in "select disk 0"

Enter in "create partition primary size=100"

Enter in "list volume", find the number this new partition was assigned.

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